Resilience of Small Scale Enterprises to Natural Disasters: A Study of a Flood Prone Area in Bangladesh

November 2012 (VOL. 30, NO. 3)

The study attempted to investigate the level of resilience of, and identify the factors affecting resilience in, small scale enterprises. A cross sectional survey was carried out with a sample of 254 micro entrepreneurs in a sub district of the Sirajganj district in Bangladesh. To investigate different sorts of business resilience, we developed several items for each scale. Results indicate that the items of each of the capital based resiliences are reliable and valid, suggesting that the Capital-Based Approach developed by Mayunga (2007) can be used to further test validity and reliability. Multivariate regression analysis revealed that several factors had significant impact on different sorts of capital based resilience. Although there was variation in capital specific resilience, education, monthly income, number of years of engagement in the current profession, number of employees, type of market, monthly income through revenue or disposal before disaster, loan received prior to disaster, and perception of recovery dynamics all had significant impact. The study concluded with theoretical and applied implications of the findings.